40 years after Boldt, the fight goes on over fewer and fewer fish

In September 1978, white fishermen made no secret of their disdain for the Boldt decision and the Native American tribes that benefitted from it by winning the right to half the state’s harvestable salmon. Today, impacts of that controversial decision, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979, have been overshadowed by the 1999 Endangered Species Act listings of threatened stocks such as Puget Sound wild chinook, which have declined by as much as 90 percent.